Special offers, updates and registration time, Mac Intel support and a little about the Mac revolution...
Table of Contents:
Mellel News:
What's going on:
Special offer nearly over -- The holidays are but a distant memory, and our special post-holiday discount will soon become a thing of the past too. Still, if you hurry up, you can still catch them and purchase Mellel for much less: Regular license costs just USD 39, Educational license just USD 29, Boxed edition and the 5 Pack are just USD 59.
Special Bookends deal still going on -- All is not lost, though. If you're a scholar or want to use a bibliography software, you'll probably be interested in our strikingly handsome, world-conquering special combo discount for Mellel and Bookends.
As usual with discounts, prices are low: Instead of paying USD 148 for regular licenses for Mellel and Bookends, you can now purchase the pair for just USD 109. If you're a student, you're even luckier, as the two will cost you just USD 89.
Important note: If you already purchased Mellel (or Bookends) you can enjoy the regular discount when purchasing the missing one. The total sum should be about the same as with the special discount.
It's about time (or more time) -- It's perhaps the most popular question Mellel owners or potential owners send us: How long will my license last? Will I have to pay an upgrade fee when Mellel version X will be released? Do I need to pay an upgrade fee now? To set the record straight, and clear things out, I'll try to describe our license and update policy.
When we first launched Mellel as a shareware product, we've promised purchasers 3 years of free updates. This promise was part of any license bought to the end of 2004. We will respect our promise, of course: if you bought Mellel before December 2004, you're entitled to 3 years of free updates.
We gave no promise regarding any purchase made from January 1, 2005. Now we do: Anyone who purchased Mellel from that day on, will be entitled to 2 years of free updates.
Updates for Mellel will be offered soon, and will cost USD 19. Purchasing the update will entitle anyone buying them to 2 additional years of free updates.
For example, if you bought Mellel in September 2004, your license will be valid to September 2007. At that point (or earlier, it doesn't matter) you can purchase the update, which will extend your license to September 2009.
How to tell if you need to buy an update? The simplest way is to simply wait and see. Your registration code is time coded, so Mellel will know and will be able to tell you if you need to update. If you don't want to wait, you'll soon be able to purchase an update, which will extend your license automatically.
Mac Intel and Mellel -- We were surprised, to be honest. When the first Mac Intel models were announced, we figured they'll be released in June 2006 (as Steven Jobs promised) and intended to create a universal binary version of Mellel with Mellel 2.1. The first models were released in January and caught like wildfire.
According to OmniGroup (here: http://update.omnigroup.com/) more than one in eight Mac users are already using Mac Intel (13.6 percent) and the adoption rate stands at more than 6 percent per month. At that rate, the Mac Intel folks will become a majority around August.
For us, that meant one thing: scrap the plans for releasing a Mac Intel version with Mellel 2.1 and release such a version much sooner. Which we will. Mellel 2.0.7, in fact, will be a universal binary version of Mellel. That is, it will run natively on both Power Macs and Mac Intel machines. The version is expected within two weeks.
More about Mellel 2.1 -- Just a short update, this time. As announced, Mellel 2.1 will support XML as Mellel's native file format. Currently, the XML part is ready, and we plan to proceed to the other features we intend to include with Mellel 2.1.
Regarding XML in Mellel, there are good news and excellent news. The good news is that the files will be comparable in terms of size to files in the existing format. Opening, working and saving times will also be on par with what you have today. That's a huge load of worries removed, as XML is sometimes notoriously reputed to be "slow." It's not. Not with Mellel, at least.
The excellent news are that XML will also open up opportunities we did not think about earlier on. Image management will be much easier (some very pleasant surprises there...), manipulating files will become much easier, and moving Mellel files to other XML formats (and other formats as well) will be much more doable.
Not a whiff anymore -- A while back, in Newsletter 15, we made a prediction about the Mac. We wrote: "The test for the change will be how 2005 turns out. If Apple sells around 3.5 Million Macs this year -- this was a false alarm. From there to 4 Million Macs, the Jury will be hang. 4 and more -- and we can say it openly: the Mac is back."
Judging by Apple's results for last year, it's quite clear that the Mac is indeed back. Talking in numbers, Mac unit sales rose from 3.5 million new Macs to 4.7 million. About a million of those, so claim some, are Windows users switching to the Mac. If anecdotal pieces of information, such as the rate of ex-Windows users of Mellel is anything to rely on, this trend just gained momentum during the first few months of 2006.
What's next? That's hard to predict. The ability to run both Mac OS X and Windows XP on the new Macs seem to point to new opportunities. For many Mac users, this ability will induce them to keep running and buying Macs, as working with some Windows only applications is now a feasible option with their Macs. For many Windows users, this may be the ideal opportunity for a "soft switch": They can now buy a Mac and, in that sense, switch, but still run whatever Windows software that kept them inside the Microsoft fold until now on the side. They can switch bit-by-bit, at their own pace.
All this is just a silly theory, of course. Still, silly theories are fun. And making predictions is even more fun. So, I'll make another one. How can we tell if the Mac is not just back, but also hitting back? Simple, if sales this year keep to about 4.5-5 Million units, than all is the same as it was. However, if Apple starts selling Macs at a rate of around 1.5 million units a quarter, it's hitting back. We might even get a clue as to why Microsoft renewed its Office development agreement with Apple. They're starting to make good money selling there.
The thing about Wikipedia (a comment) -- Some readers of the Wikipedia item in Newsletter 18 commented on what seemed to be a harsh judgement of the Wikipedia enterprise and some even suggested I may have been hostile to it. Just as a clarification: I've been and still am an active contributor to Wikipedia for more than a year, writing around 600 articles and contributing to thousands more. I have, in a way, intimate knowledge of how things work there. What I wrote, was motivated by worry, not spite.
